Hummingbirds
by Nerumi H
Summary: Haku has always been quiet. She doesn't fight, she doesn't scream, even when terrible things happen to her. She's a voiceless hummingbird, hovering, heart beating too fast as she waits, in the hospital, to be told if Dell will survive.


.title.: **Hummingbirds**

.summary.: **Haku has always been quiet. She doesn't fight, she doesn't scream, even when terrible things happen to her. She's a voiceless hummingbird, hovering, heart beating too fast as she waits, in the hospital, to be told if Dell will survive...**

.characters.: **Yowane Haku - Honne Dell**

.warnings.: **Dell-language, attempted rape/assault, violence**

.cover art by.: **Suzunosuke**

.a/n.: **Translation for Truth + Lies (Miku): Kisekikui (YouTube)**

**EDIT: Thank you for all the feedback and kind words! I can't even bring myself to read this anymore; it makes me cringe. The curse of aged writing, I suppose. Thank you very much, though.**

**X**

There were people watching her.

That much, though her vision blurred and tilted with tears, she knew.

Couldn't they go back to their own businesses?

Couldn't the news reporters...

Please leave?

Dusty boom microphones, loud words, demanding voices grate at her ears like intruding animals.

They want to know what happened, of course; but with his screams resonating in her head like an echo down a long monochrome hallway...

She doesn't want to remember how it happened, she only knows the present of here: Haku smelling blood and tears floating from everybody in the building. Doctors with the vital liquid dying their hands and arms crimson like tribal tattoos as they dig further to find a cure; people, like her, waiting and sobbing and terrified for an outcome that no one can follow and trace.

People like _her?_

But she is not crying—

He hated it when she cried.

**X**

"_So, tell me. Did you?"_

"_I don't know."_

"_How the fuck could you 'not know'?"_

_Haku lowers her head, silver hair tumbling further into her eyesight. The vision of the table becomes sliced by her silver strands. She tries to angle herself so the hair would fall equal to the heavy fissures and chips in the old plastic tabletop._

_It was plastic, because it was cheap. A lot in this house was cheap; one floor and one shared bathroom and not enough food._

_Even the food was plastic, to her._

_So, this was her dollhouse, like a place little fake robots would trail through, daily routine._

_A click, and abruptly, her nose was assaulted with sour cigarette fumes._

"_I don't know," Haku responds finally, refusing to look up at her brother through her thick bangs. She kept those bangs long for a reason; so she wouldn't have to look anyone in the eyes._

_Her mother had said the much-overused line—'eyes are the window to the soul'. Haku had believed it; that with a single glance, a world can be built up or torn down. When she looked at people directly, she was sharing her fears and secrets and dreams, a heavy privilege. Her parents (the only people who saw the depths of her crimson irises) went to the grave with her pain crushing their hearts, their heads filled with her sobbing and her terrors of everyday._

_She didn't want to ever again look someone in the eyes._

_Well, it wasn't as if anyone __**tried**__ to see those fears and secrets and dreams, anyway._

_His voice is like a yawn, drawled and tired and annoyed. It is sinking in a chair exhaustedly. It is ramming a door shut with a shoulder when the hands are too busy cradling a baby. "You're telling me that have no clue whether you told anyone or not that some sonofabitch threatened you."_

"_I...told __**you**__."_

"_You're such a...Haku. Really." It is a glare and an annoyed slam of the nursery door._

_She lowers her head. A baby sobbing through the barricade; _give me attention.

_There is a long moment, perhaps two minutes, but she dares not count how long her shyness and fear was winning over her. The time is punctuated by dog barking outside, a few cars rushing by their apartment and people leaning on the horn. Haku felt her eyes water—because of the cigarette smoke._

_He always blows it out right in her face to make her pay attention to him._

_She hated it, but she was a good 'Haku' and never said anything._

_She refused to move at all. Her neck is started to hurt, her fingers wound so tight they cramped._

_Her eyes prick with tears, and a few slip without her consent; escaping kittens from a pound._

_The nursery door cracks open._

"_Haku."_

"_..."_

"_I told you not to cry."_

"_I...I'm sorry."_

_The baby has been taken back into arms a little too strong. "You'll get more than a threat next time if you keep that up, you know."_

"_I'm...sor—"_

"_People like them __**target**__ people like you."_

_The baby sobs, grasping at its parent's shirt, letting go in an aimless and scared flail._

"_You'll get raped next time." This is unintentional cigarette smoke in the baby's face, eyes._

"_..."_

"_You'll get murdered next time." Sinking to its lungs, a dark poison that can ruin for the future._

"_Not...necessarily."_

"_Fuck yes, __**necessarily**__."_

_Baby coughs for a defence. "T...teenagers don't do that."_

"_Haku, you're a walking symbol for 'easy, easy, easy.'" He doesn't even sense the nicotine rat poison on his breath._

_Baby shuts its eyes and breathes; baby still wants to cry and scream but what will these strong arms do next? Baby accepts and collects the smoke in her lungs. It may affect her later; maybe it will kill her._

_But Daddy doesn't know, he has no clue, he is ignorant._

_He wanted to stop baby's crying._

_But he wrapped the sympathy in a pill that is too hard to swallow._

_She chokes._

**X**

Haku crosses her feet at the ankles, un-cross, re-cross, agitated bird. It was minutes ago that they wheeled him in, on a rickety cot, loudly. Fast. The intensity sat in the air like a vulture.

It had been like in the movies when they'd wheeled him in. Strangely, this idea softens the ice glazed on her pale alabaster skin.

In the movies, the main character always makes it through, better than before.

They're strong, but they just got mixed up playing hero.

Haku trails her fingers along the magazines piled on the side tables right next to her soft cushy chair. Waiting room magazines.

How can anyone read about...vacation homes, while their love is under the knife of trust in the doctors?

Dell under **that** knife; the idea makes her want to collapse in a sob, and the idea makes her want to shiver.

How many times had he put Haku herself straight under that knife of trust in him, sharp and inviting and terrifying?

If she hesitated, he would make a false cut, and she would be permanently scarred.

If she accepted...

A microphone nudges her cheek.

Ms Yowane this, Ms Yowane that, they prod.

Where are his injuries?

Where were you at the time of the crime?

Did you see who shot him?

How many bullets?

She doesn't want to answer, and angles her head away, as if she could sail away far and fast from these savages. Escape and never remember of them and their lives, their other world, again. She will leave; she could never assimilate them, like a Cortez, like a Columbus.

She is a Haku.

Haku's do nothing but turn away and stay silent.

...

...

It's the Dell's who fight.

**X**

_Doll House door swings shut, hinges whine, steps pause, shrugging fabric, Haku sits in air and waits._

_He slips past her room's door, nothing but a grey and black ghost against a backdrop of Doll House. There is an ember bobbing at his fingertips, a cell phone cracked open at his ear._

_Who is he speaking to?_

_She'd rather he speak to her._

_Baby is whining, baby is tangled in her blankets._

_Haku tucks her knees to her face, sitting atop her bed in the dimly lit room. She is the owner of the only bedroom in the Doll House; Dell sleeps on the couch._

_She barely smiles when she thinks of how many times she'd hear him fall off the narrow surface of the couch in the middle of the night; however, it is not so funny in the morning when he's grouchy._

_Dell laughs; the sound is clean air, a kiss on the cheek, impossible circumstances and a descending sun over smiling figures._

_Of course, he's speaking to Gumi._

_..._

_..._

_..._

_How does he do that?_

_Be so—easily-comported, so relaxed, so close to her._

_They don't match, but at the same time, they match as easily as Haku to a mute hummingbird._

_How does he have someone like her?_

_Someone so small and someone so..._

_Frail._

_He's never made her cry, Haku knows._

_He's never poisoned that baby._

_Gumi is in Haku's class, therefore two years younger than Dell, who has already graduated a while back. Gumi loves talking about him with her friends, and from her bubble in the corner—dim, dark, dusty, alone, can't this protect me?—Haku hears the stories and the love she has for Dell._

_But Haku only stays in her lonely little bubble._

_As if the imaginary reflective rainbow film would __**ever **__protect her..._

_The only people that penetrate it are not people who love;_

_Like Dell to Gumi;_

_They're people who are downwards glares, loud laughs, sideways grins and nudges to their companions._

_Sometimes they're people who are sharp knives and words that are even sharper; people who are the discovery of alcohol at a dark night; people who are the pleasure at seeing a baby cry._

_People who are not the electric shock at the end of a collar; but instead they are the will to not be held back by it; the people who are frustration..._

_Baby's lonely sobbing grows louder,_

_But others are more important to Daddy right now._

_Others are easier to deal with._

_Others don't cry so much for those pointless reasons._

**X**

The only difference this time is that it is not Haku getting hurt, it's her brother.

It's by people who wanted _him_ more than they wanted _her._

What will people say when she returns to school?

Will she still be shoved around, snickered at by the girls, and stolen from and beat up for kicks?

Or will they actually...sympathise with her?

She means sympathise by ignoring, as that would be the best release of all.

...

...

...This is selfish.

He's dying.

And all she can think about is herself.

Her mother said, before, that one day the world will bend to_ her_ wills, and it will be Dell at the bottom instead of at the top as he is now.

(She hadn't liked Dell very much.)

But if Dell is as the bottom, he'll be lost to Haku in an abyss of words and status and money—and she still will need him.

She will always need him.

Dell tried his best, and he was important; but he wasn't from the storybooks.

He didn't say everything nicely nor stay calm nor welcome her home from school with a story and a home-cooked meal nor kiss her goodnight.

But, if he was lost from her, whether from her moving on, or from him dying from the blooms of crimson on his body;

Who else will tell her to wake up in the mornings, to get ready for school, with a shake and a few careful words as to not shock her out of her thoughts? Who else will give up a date with Gumi or a friend, just because Haku is pretending she doesn't want to go see that new movie release? Who else will convince her to speak up, to stop letting people run over her?

Who else will wait with the door ajar, sitting against the outside wall with a cigarette, listening hard to decipher if she is sobbing herself to sleep at night?

Those were all Dell's jobs, and more.

Her eyes are overflowing with these memories and those tears.

She'd never, ever wished this upon a person, not even her bullies.

The person who shot him must rot in hell.

**X**

_Haku is on her bed, her legs crossed, bare feet cold against her thighs. She has Dell's cell phone with her, cradled the perfect size in her palm._

_She lets herself hear the perfect tune wallowing from the tiny unclear speakers of the phone, eyes shut, body absorbing the notes like blood to a carpet. She can feel the instruments, beat, being engraved into her alabaster skin._

_Pen-strokes delicate on pressed cloth paper._

_She opens her mouth and lets the lyrics curl up her throat and away as a bird falls from the nest for the first time._

"Longed for; saddening; painful; not meeting. Effeminate; unhappy; hide-and-seek; rounding itself.

The wilted flower and my love for you

Even if I wither and droop it doesn't matter

Is it alright?

This rounded back

Wilts, droops sadly

When spring comes,

Nonsense starts to disap—"

_Haku snaps her mouth shut, shock, alarm, embarrassment._

_She cannot hit the note._

_Dell is there, at her door, unannounced, unasked, his fingers clean of cigarettes completely. He was working, perhaps on paperwork—his hands are stained with leaking ink. Silver hair splayed into his eyes—he needs to get it cut._

_Dell always tells Haku to get her own hair cut...but she refuses, her mother's thoery of many years still acting as her bible. Her eyes avoid him when his voice cuts over the low-quality song still singing from the phone._

_Still singing in Haku's head, but she will not say a note aloud._

_The baby doesn't want to be handled. He does it anyway. "I thought you stopped singing."_

"_Th-this isn't even...singing," she says in a whisper. Blushing, a flood of tiny red spiders burying in her cheeks. "I..." She straightens up, and pushes his cell phone to the end of her bed for him to receive. "I shouldn't. S-sing, I mean. It just...makes me upset. I c-can't sing; I'm sorry for disturbing you."_

_Not a word. Not setting the baby back down to its dreams and comfortable sleep. The dreams which are sometimes spiked by nightmares, unasked and uninvited chides and cruel words directed at herself._

"_..."_

"_If you're so __**bad**__, then why the hell do you do it?" Dell asks. He leans sideways in the doorframe. Folded arms, a rumpled shirt, tired eyes with dark circles around them as usual._

_Baby's kicks to be put back down are not felt; Daddy is thinking too much._

"_Because you love it?"_

_Haku whispers 'yes,' hoping she is heard, because she hates to repeat things. It makes her feel dumb to do that._

_She looks at his cell phone and wishes it would ring so he will answer and leave her alone._

_She hates being so terrible at singing—hates it more that the songs have taken such a deep place in her that melodies have become her heart. All her emotions and pain and fears are music._

_They just can't be told or messaged or shown to anyone but herself, alone, in her room, where she hopes no one will hear her._

_This time, Dell has heard, and he is there, watching her with eyes that are protective._

"_Then why worry what the fuck other people are going to think of it?"_

_She blurts, "...It...it lets __**me **__down; it isn't about other people..."_

_Dell smirks, though it's one that tells her she's being silly. That gesture reveals what he is going to say before he even opens his mouth. "You beat yourself up too much."_

_Baby has stopped her kicking, she stays quiet. Perhaps she is scared, perhaps she wants to hear this as a small part of her knows that Daddy's permanent poison and tight grip means well._

_After all, he doesn't mean to hurt her._

"_...But it's true."_

_Dell moves forwards, and then lowers himself to his knees onto the carpet. He stares up at her, attempting to catch her eyes, but she doesn't want to unload her mental torment that she tries so hard to hide onto him. It killed their parents, and she doesn't want that to happen to Dell._

"_I don't know why you do this. It's as if, you're trying to hurt yourself. It's sick, Haku, and I don't like having to watch it."_

_She turns her head away. The purple and black bow in her hair flirts with the nape of her neck. "I'm not... __**trying**__ to hurt myself."_

_Dell snorts incredulously. "You know you __**are.**__ Haku, don't kick yourself down. You have twenty-something other people to do that for you."_

_Hold too tight; Baby squirms._

_She doesn't like to be reminded of what awaits her once she leaves the Doll House._

_There she becomes a rejected, ridiculed thrift store marionette in a world full of Barbies._

"_Why do you have to compare yourself to standards?"_

"_..."_

"_Even if they are __**your **__standards. For something you love, you shouldn't be hurting yourself just to be the best in it. To sing, it makes you happy, right? At least for a short moment until you decide you're too happy and you gotta get screwed again, fast, before you actually start smiling?"_

_Haku barely nods._

"_So keep with it. Keep singing. Who's judging? I'm not—and here, no one else will."_

"_Except..."_

"_Except, yeah, yourself."_

"_..."_

"_Don't you see the unjust in that?" He stands, unnaturally crimson eyes trailing on her eyelashes, as if hoping to catch her off-guard and meet his little sister's gaze. Without looking away, Dell picks up his cell phone from her thin sheets. "All your life you've had enemies. Don't you think it's time you made an ally."_

_Baby opens her eyes, turning into his form. The grip on her loosens, and the air is clear, her body free. Baby stays silent, finding herself lost in his voice and eyes like she never has experienced before; a cat released from a dark cage in the darkest room of the darkest people._

_Dell grins. "I'm gonna sound fucking stupid and like a shrink or something; but don't you think that ally should at least be yourself?"_

_Haku holds her breath. He steps out of the room, slow enough to give her enough time to manage a sentence out of her weak mouth._

_She is honestly too shocked to speak—she looked him in the eye._

_All is lost._

_She feels no better._

_He will have to deal with __**her **__now—constant, never leaving, her nags and her chides and her whines that she wished to keep forever in her own head—she is now thinking as him, he is thinking as her._

_What she fears, what she desires._

_So then why can't he hear her ask, "Can you be my ally instead?"_

_As he shuts the door, the baby screams for attention._

**X**

They have caught her.

An animal in a trap, she squirms, a rabbit.

The man who set the trap slowly takes it off her twisted leg, careful of these injuries. He is sorry. But he needs her cooperation.

This man wears a white coat, tight blue latex gloves, a white mask held by elastic around his head, but the mask is pulled down so he can speak. Glasses reflect the overhead light. She cannot see his eyes, and that is perfectly fine with rabbit-Haku.

He is one of the men with the knife. The knife that is the trust in the doctors, putting all you've got on the line just to hope that that knife hits home. There is also a female there; she stands behind him voicelessly.

"Ms Yowane, can we take a minute of your time?"

She nods barely. She doubts he can see her twitch of affirmation. She licks her lips and, hoping that he will listen closely, says, "Yes."

He and the uniformed woman—she is a police officer—leads her off to the side of the waiting room, where no one but the strongest of eavesdroppers will hear. Even _they _won't be able to detect Haku's whispering—it's a skill she took 17 years to master.

"I'm Dr Kiyoteru Hiyama. And this is officer Megurine Luka."

The woman smiles at her in a friendly way. She has long salmon-pink hair in a ponytail, under her police cap.

Dr Hiyama starts. "Honne Dell...he's your brother, yes?"

"Yes."

"Of a different parent?"

"...Father."

"Okay. He didn't have any ID on him."

"...his name?"

"Sorry, I didn't hear that."

"...How did you know his...name?"

"You told us, Ms Yowane, at check-in."

"...Oh." This is why Haku didn't like to speak. Especially not in flustered situations like this.

"It's alright." The doctor nods. When he moves his head, the lights on his glasses disappear like dissipating cigarette smoke. She can see his eyes, and she was so close to meeting them and sharing her thoughts with him—so close.

She is scared of the glasses now.

Thankfully, the officer takes over. Her voice is smooth, a voice that is soothing a child to sleep, green herbal tea, an unexpected bite and click of handcuffs.

"So, because of the missing ID, can you tell us some things about the two of you?"

Haku is scared of what she'll ask her. Dell had told her once that there was no reason for her to ever tell anyone something she didn't want to tell. ...That is, her brother was the exception—Dell wanted/needed to know everything she thought of, and from the day a year ago that she locked gazes with him, she supposed, whether she said them or not, he_ did_ know everything she thought of.

And everything she thought of years before.

And everything she will think of in the future. "Yes."

"How old is your brother?"

"J...Just turned 20."

"Where are your parents?"

"His father...is...in jail, I think. My parents died in a car crash."

"I'm sorry about that."

She flinches as she imagines Officer Megurine patting her shoulder, but she does no such thing.

"So you two are living alone."

"Yes."

"Where about?"

She told her quietly.

"Hm...Now, about what happened. Where were you when it happened? Can you explain it to me?"

"..."

"It will help us track down your brother's..." hesitation... "shooter."

She was...going to say murderer?

She was going to say murderer.

Haku scuttles backwards, rabbit confronted by a shotgun. Her heart ticktickticks in her chest like a clock wound too hard too fast. She blinks into the bright light above, sunlight burning her delicate skin as she does not want it. There isn't any shade.

Now, Luka reaches out a hand. "Haku," she says slowly, wearing the voice of honey charm to tea. What did she sound like when she was doing the fighting? Why was she faking Haku with_ this_ voice?

"Was he killed?" Haku breathes, her throat an empty cicada husk that hates being disturbed.

Kiyoteru and Luka both search for her eyes, but she shifts her crimson irises away every time they try. They mustn't _ever_ feel how terrified she is—an animal prey must never show a weakness.

She is shivering, though.

They can feel and see that.

Kiyoteru says, "He's doing fine, Haku. I will explain to you what his condition will be once Officer Megurine—"

'_But I want to know, I want to know now._

_Dell needs to be alright. He needs to be perfect._

_He needs to be like the hero in a movie; like a perfect storybook father._

_A storybook with a perfect ending...'_

A long moment passes as Haku refuses to speak. Luka has moved in front of Kiyoteru, her eyes kind and glazing over Haku's eyelids as the silver-haired girl cowers against the office desk.

In the background, the glass front doors fly open. A siren shuts off, a siren that has its sound so permanently dug into Haku's brain that she can hardly notice it now. She'd heard it the whole ride of gasping, serrated heart beating, blood, leather straps to stop Dell from tearing himself out of the vehicle.

He hated hospitals.

Hated.

Hospitals had been his home for the past forty-five minutes though.

Boy, he'd be annoyed when he woke up.

...If.

'_If?'_

A cot is wheeled into the hospital lobby, and Haku turns to see it, to distract herself, seemingly. A few doctors are around a young blonde boy, dressed in blood from head to toe. They are feeding him tubes, watching for a heartbeat. A girl that looks scarily like him is running with the high speed of the cot.

Haku hadn't ran with the cot like this little blonde girl. She'd sat in the ambulance until Dell had disappeared in the building.

She'd been too busy trying to stop her approaching tears to be scared of the person who helped her out of the truck and to the waiting room and check-in.

The little blonde is screaming at the doctors. She is telling them to keep him alive, and threatening them. She says she knows their jobs better than they do. Her screams are terrified and angry; they are of friendship, of laughing in the evening moon and a throat tightening like a trap—they are late warnings, they are shrieking in agony, they are of playing on train tracks; they are the fun game turned black.

Her mother and father hold her back, too terrified for their son to mutter apologies to the doctors for their daughter's attitude. The young girl is hollering for her twin brother, clawing her restraints like a desperate, desperate, dying child needing freedom.

Haku wants to save her; she knows how she feels, she is just far more quiet about it.

Luka speaks up again, her voice simple and hushed and careful. "Haku, can you tell me how your brother got injured?"

Haku slides her eyes closed. The screams of that girl are mingling with Dell's shouts, his groans as the pain took over and swallowed him. It is all in her head, she knows the vicious replay isn't true.

But her head is the most terrifying place to be.

**X**

_It is evening, a low horizon sunset glaring red and pink and yellow hue._

_Haku and Dell are outside, Dell trying to shade the screen of his cell phone enough from the sun to decipher what his boss has told him in an email. Haku had told her brother to come outside with her—well, she didn't tell him, but he sensed it in her eyes which she now let him meet whenever he liked. (After all...he already knew all her thoughts, what harm could it do now.)_

_She knows he'd rather be inside, where it was easier for him to see, and he could sit in his aura of cigarette smoke where it stood stagnant in every room. While here, it floats away, gone from his grasp and the potential calmness it could have set on him._

_But he is out here, because baby had been crying for it._

_Haku is cross-legged on the grass, stroking a small stray cat about the neck. She loves cats; it's a fetish of hers even though her mother had never allowed animals in the house. Haku often compared things to felines—the hiss of a glare that struck Dell whenever she whispered to him across the room that she'd been beat up at school again; the quietness with which she slithers across her room to shut the door after Dell had decided she was asleep; everything she can._

_The cat is grey and white._

_It's tail is crooked at the end, as if someone had stepped on it._

_His fur is mussed and matted and dirty, yet still, it sheens beautifully right to the tips of ears._

_It reminds Haku of herself._

_But if she were a cat, she'd be the kind that hides under porches and waits for food to be given to her, as she is too afraid of getting kicked to __**ask**__ for it._

_Dell swears and shields his phone from a different angle with his hand._

_He doesn't leave though._

_Like this, just with him around, Baby feels safe and warm. The smoke is forgotten, the tight grip is slack but secure enough to keep her from falling._

_The cat arches it's triangle-shaped head to the sky in happiness as Haku rubs her finger under his chin. His little white paws step onto her jeans, and Haku imagines how rough a stay cat's feet are. Then the cat seems to hear something beyond the tiniest cheery smile Haku is wearing and the growl Dell is muttering. The grey ears prick up._

_The cat leaps away from Haku, flicking her arm with his tail. He puts his face to the grass, sniffing experimentally a few times, then trots off the scraggly lawn, to the side of the house._

_Haku carefully stands. The cat glances back at her, as if asking, 'Come with me, I want to show you something.'_

_Haku's inner child has taken control, her eyes connect with the cat's, and she feels trust in the little innocent animal._

_He is so much like her._

_She follows him._

_Dell looks up momentarily. He watches her back, the muscles that connect to her legs work under her thinness as she steps. He allows her to go, but takes his attention away completely from the phone._

_Haku follows the cat to the side of the house. Here, it smells like heat, like dirt, like cigarettes, but at this point Haku is so familiar with the smell that only sensitive Baby can taste that stench._

_The cat continues, picking its way carefully in the dirt._

_They leave the small passage between the houses, and out into a back alley. Haku doesn't think, and she keeps following, imagining her steps as light as the cat, her stance as casual yet alert, her movement so beautiful._

_Until she hears the gravel crunch behind her._

_Haku whips around, hoping the cat will stay, hoping there is no one there. The red lights of the sunset glares into her eyes, and even when she stumbles backwards, it follows her with a gun of rays slashing her retinas._

_She slams her eyes shut, her throat going icy._

_The ice turns to a freeze that can shatter her body at a mere touch when an unfamiliar voice speaks up, "What are you looking for?"_

_Haku shields her eyes, and tries to look around the glare of the sunset. She wishes for it to lower quickly. Only two dark forms can be seen around the rays. One has long purple hair, the other, short blonde._

_Both are men, both are walking to her._

_Haku stumbles backwards._

"_N-n-n-...I...I-I-I...," she stutters uncontrollably. Her heart is a hummingbird's. Fast, tickticktickticktick, for no good reason._

"_What are you freaking out about?" the blonde is speaking._

"_...I..."_

"_Why are you here?" Is he trying to sound sympathetic? Worried? For her?_

"_..."_

"_She doesn't talk much," the purple-haired one says, his voice slow and dark. Like something that is heard on the other side of the phone line in a horror movie, black night._

_The blonde turns. They are starting to shift out of the sunrays but deeper into her space. He says to his companion, "The quieter ones are better, Gakupo."_

_The other laughs throatily. Haku hates hearing it. She notices they are speaking lowly for a reason—for silence, for secrecy._

_The hummingbird heart palpitates in her intense, unnameable fear._

"_..." is all she says._

_They are discussing plans, events, something she'd rather not hear. She understands what is going to happen, understands fully...but...she can't even move._

_The blonde suddenly grabs her by the arm, so tight, nails are glass bullets in her muscle and nerves._

'_Gakupo' says, still low, still a dark night, "How old are you, girl?"_

"_Doesn't matter," the blonde smirks, his face so close to Haku's that she can see traces and lines, he looks young, 25? 27? Pale lips, blue eyes, he's even attractive, she would say this if he wasn't who he was. There is rum on his breath, it stings._

"_Looks young." His dark blue eyes trace down to her chest. "Yeah, sure. Gakupo? Car."_

"_Yeah, Leon," the other man says lowly, and turns and starts swaggering to a dark shape that Haku hadn't seen before in the descending sunlight. Gakupo blocks his eyes. Haku does the same with her free hand._

_The cat is gone._

_Leon is grinning at her—a grin of fighting and conquering and no regrets, never being caught._

_She doesn't squirm._

_He still holds her waist, fingers tangled in her shirt, as if she will run._

_The car pulls up. Haku feels the blood drain from her face._

_She is scared, but doesn't let her imagination wander of what the two of these guys will do to easy, easy, easy Haku._

_She's stuck, being strangled by her limited vision and the descending dimness and the smell of booze and the hands on her body. She is shoved to the car._

_Her voice does not __**betray**__ her by saying __**nothing**__—_

_Because she isn't trying to say anything in the first place._

_This makes Haku remember school._

_The arguments she never fought back on; the slamming into lockers; her missing lunches and missing equipment; people calling her slut; being followed home by people in cars; being followed home by people on foot. The girls hissing cruel words about her to her face, stuffing her locker with love notes from a guy they knew she had a crush on; and when she was in the bathroom they'd ask her what Dell thinks of her baby with him._

_Yes, Dell was also always brought up._

_People knew he was her guard dog; he scared people off with his yelling, his threats. Once he scared one of Haku's bullies so bad he never tried to feel her up in the locker room again. He didn't even speak to her; look at her anymore. Another time Dell got track of a guy who had followed a weak, 'easy, easy, easy'-looking Haku on her way home, and he had to fight a court trial for assault._

_Daddy's yelling kept people away. But it hurt Baby's ears so much, she just cried more, and it attracted more people to her side. More people who could make her voicebox break from screaming even more._

_And sometimes, Daddy wasn't always there._

_And what could Haku do? Easy, easy, easy bird-heart Haku?_

_This hummingbird has broken wings, has always had broken wings, and has never even tried to use them._

_That is all._

_She is broken._

_A knee to her back, slamming her into the car. Hands everywhere, voices hissing, threats? Slicing comments, rude words, censors._

_The cat is gone._

_Ran away._

_Why can't she? She was stepping like a cat before..._

_When she wasn't so terrified._

"_What a fucking bitch. Are you retarded? Or just so much of slut that you won't fight me?"_

_Rip of fabric, she is halfway in the car, halfway out, what is their plan?_

_Her head is being slammed against some part of the car, she is clueless, her eyes are shut._

_Where is her guard dog?_

_Can't he see her? Find her?_

_He surely cannot hear her..._

_Baby cannot even make a sound as she suffers; crib death._

_Silence is an enemy here, how she wants to scream, but a ball of tears in her throat are compressing every cry down. She never screamed and never complained and never fought._

_She never even prayed._

_She just asked:_

_When will Dell save her?_

_Easy, easy, easy._

_Easy..._

_That's all she was—she couldn't cook she couldn't talk she couldn't laugh she couldn't sing._

_She couldn't do anything but please others in their sadistically dark wishes?_

_Well..._

_Baby doesn't even want to try and untangle herself._

_Baby is suffocating, but her mind cannot process that this is death. This is just __**pain.**__ A pain she doesn't know the definition of—is it bad? It feels bad. Then why aren't I fighting?_

_-The nursery door slams open._

_Everything is gone, and Haku falls back as there are no hands on her to support her anymore. The sun glares ferociously, a narrator to the scene, but Haku sees her brother there._

_He'd ripped the blonde off of her and now punches him hard in the face._

_The blonde groans, tries to fight at the hold, but although Dell is shorter, Dell seems to be stronger. He slams him to the concrete, a hand on his throat and his skull crashes to the gravel._

_Haku shrinks into the cab of the car, although she knows that is a bad idea. She can easily be driven away with, but she needs to be in a close space now. She grabs her sweater that they had ripped off. Her shirt is gone, she cannot find it, so she only covers herself with the hoodie. On her neck she feels a tiny amount of blood trickle down from her scalp._

_They are back at school, Dell is back to being her fighter and protector; her story-tale-perfect brother._

_Then it is all shattered as Gakupo tears out a gun from his belt._

_Dell freezes._

"_Didn't need to use this on your—sister, is it? She didn't even fight us, so what are __**you **__doing?" Gakupo says, no stars nor moon in the black air of his words. "She wanted it."_

_The gun is up, and Haku squints. The sun is dropping fast._

_Dell slowly lets go of Leon but doesn't get up off the offender's chest; his eyes keeping a heavy-lidded sarcastic gaze on Gakupo. He has a grin twisting his mouth._

_Baby cringes as Daddy's hands rip the blanket that she'd been suffocating in. The fabric turns to glass and instead hurts __**him.**_

_Gakupo steps forwards, and Leon is watching everybody, his eyes even flicking to Haku. She makes sure to never look his way again._

"_Dude, you're seriously going to pull a gun on me?" Dell snorts, his fingers still hovering over Leon's throat. "When you're the fucker who tried to rape my sister?"_

"_You're the fucker that's getting into our business," Gakupo says. "So get up and get your hands off of him, and leave."_

_Dell is still half-grinning. It hurts Haku to see him act so conceited. She is terrified and Baby is whining._

"_I'm not afraid of you."_

"_You're an idiot," Leon says._

_Gakupo snaps, "Get up and leave or I'm going to give you a bullet to the head!"_

"_Fight for it?" Dell smirks lowly. He stands, Leon scrambles up after him. He has blood trickling over his cheek and neck from where Dell had thrown him to the concrete—blood from his nose and mouth from the punch._

_The safety snaps off, Haku nearly screams. She curls her arms around her knees, as if this is a very terrifying horror movie that she is being forced to watch._

_If only if could be as harmless..._

_Dell lunges first, throwing himself to the main weaponry. He ducks a second before the gun fires, slams an elbow into the other man's gut._

_Gakupo falls back a step, but before he can do anything Dell has a hand on the wrist that possesses the gun, another hand on the side of his head. He pushes, twisting his arm back, then cans Gakupo hard._

_Whole time, he is still grinning._

_Dell is seeing this as a game?_

_Who will win the prize, Haku?_

_She wears __**his**__ team colours._

_But Leon flies past, and snatches the gun from Gakupo's awkwardly-angled arm. Dell doesn't notice, and Haku wants to screech._

_Hummingbirds don't chirp, though._

_They beat wings noiselessly, they hover, don't run._

_He hasn't a clue, he is working on twisting Gakupo straight out of shape, until Leon forces the muzzle of the gun into his temple._

_Dell drops Gakupo's arms in shock, and the enemy lurches away._

_He massages his arms._

_Dell just cringes through his grin, watching Haku._

_She exchanges gazes with him._

_Hummingbird heart is slamming its way out of her ribcage._

"_Not so confident now are you?" Leon snarls, and nudges Dell over a step with the gun. A finger tenses over the trigger, so ready to pull, so gunned by alcohol and senselessness and boredom._

"_Don't pull it, you son of a bitch."_

"_If my mother was a bitch, then what ho was yours? Some waste, spawning something like her." He jerks his head to Haku._

_That is a floodgate, pulled, released, and Dell whirls around in ferocity. The gun leaves his skin, and when he attacks Leon without thinking, a gunfire rings out._

_It is the sound of flames, of dark forging, of illegally trading, of puncturing skin and breaking bones._

_Haku doesn't cry out._

_Haku shrinks instead._

_Dell hollers out in agony and surprise, and compresses his right hand into his stomach. Blood floods from his palm, disgusting, a straight shot. He doesn't fall to his knees; instead, he looks up, the face of a fighter. Sweat is breaking out on his skin._

_Sinking, the sun is finished narrating. It senses the end of this production._

_Dell growls; he is in pain but he can still joke. This is still a game, high stakes, winner take all. "Well, damn. Now I can't hold a smoke."_

_They are annoyed with that wry humour, and Leon shakes his head._

"_Want to try that again and actually kill me?" Dell snaps._

_Haku keeps an eye on Gakupo for him._

_But she knows she won't be able to tell him about the danger, if there becomes any more._

_Dell feigns left, causing Leon to lose a worthy bullet, and Dell ducks under his arm to his back. He crouches down, swings out a foot fast and knocks Leon down by the ankles. He springs back up to his feet, and slams a heel into Leon's back—but the blonde flips at the last second, earning a combat boot to his chest._

_It doesn't throw him off in the slightest bit._

_He fires again._

_Dell screams again, this time, it breaks off in a whine, and he lowers his head. He still does not fall, but stumbles backwards and shrinks into Gakupo's fists._

_He is held back from running._

_Haku sits and waits, her whole body vibrating in fear._

_It looks as if the guard dog will be euthanized._

_Gakupo's grip is a crushing anaesthetic._

_The blood pooling from his thigh is a mark of a needle._

_Her own blood pounds in her ears like a water-filled drum._

_Dell struggles, not in short constant flails, but he throws himself left and right in strong bursts. Still he isn't let go of. He avoids putting weight on his left leg that was shot._

_Leon says happily, "You know what, I think I __**will **__try again."_

_Haku shrugs back further into the car, her whole body shaking, her hummingbird heart palpitating, her breathing sharp and unequal. It feel as if it is bringing no oxygen to her head._

_Out of the corner of her eye, she spots an alcohol bottle in the front seat._

_The lack of oxygen stunts her thoughts:_

_Hummingbird claws reach delicately for it._

_Leon crushes the muzzle of the gun into Dell's chest, directly where his heart lies under layers. He collapses a bit on the shot leg, and sinks. Gakupo jerks him upright again, his hold tight and biting._

_Haku is quiet, cat quiet, and slinks from the cab of the car, her body an ice statue and moves slowly in the dark._

_Leon says, "I have to congratulate you on your __**gallant**__ attempt at protecting your sister. We promise to treat her well."_

_Dell grits his teeth—they flash in the evening like porcelain bullets. Sarcastic grin; one that knew everything and gave up nothing. He feeds it to his potential murderer on a cold dish._

_That expression infuriates Leon, and his finger curls the trigger._

_The gunshot rings at the same time that broken bottle shards crash to the ground._

_Leon tries to holler, and his body drops. Gakupo's hold on Dell weakens enough for him to drop to the concrete._

_Haku holds the spiked and wicked bottle neck in her fist. Her wrist is shaking. The whole place smells like blood._

_Leon presses his palm against where she'd hit him, his head._

_Dell whines under his breath from his injuries, then grabs the discarded gun and whips it across Leon's face with a loud crack._

_This is where the hummingbird flies. If only for a short moment._

**X**

Little rabbit heart wishes to give in.

Little rabbit heart claws from Haku's chest and scrambles along the floor, trailing blood and her words and thoughts and memories everywhere.

Luka sets a hand on her shoulder, a comforting hand.

Or at least, it is trying to be comforting.

Haku wants no other comfort than Dell.

**X**

_The siren roars. A calling demon in the night._

_Haku rests on her knees beside Dell, his head in her lap._

_His breathing is worse than hers._

_The demon continues to soar somewhere far off—it sounds like it is coming from above, encircling, and arriving, but not fast enough._

_Leon and Gakupo are gone from the distance, overtop the arches in the alley, gone._

_They got away with this, with everything._

_Haku strokes her brother's cheek, with her fingertips like small feathers._

"_You're not h-hurt...are you?" Dell manages, his voice rough._

"_I'm not hurt," she confirms in a whisper, lying. __**Seeing **__him like this hurts her..._

_He is covered in blood. His hand is a mangled mess still cradled to his torso, his jeans on his left leg look like they were painted on with thick crimson oil, so tight and clinging because of the blood gushing from his thigh. Lastly, his shoulder: a slash in his skin, seems weak and innocent next to the others._

_Haku feels proud that she was the reason he wasn't dead tonight._

_Her hit on Leon had thrown him off by inches, so Dell's heart is still complete._

_Still beating,_

_Still beating for her._

_Yet again, she is the very reason he might die later._

_Dell cringes painfully, a gasp escaping before he can stop it. Then he angles his head to the side, his uninjured arm swept across his body tightly as if that would hold in his blood from escaping to the concrete. He says, his voice one of anger and pain and agony and family, "Fucking y-yell for me next time. You...never do. One day I won't get to you in t-time."_

"_I...I'm sorry..." Her only honest words since an hour ago._

"_Yeah, you b-better be fucking sorry. Dumbass."_

"_I'm sorry, I really am..."_

_He wants to say something back, but he chokes on his own words, his own pain._

"_Dell...?" She is so afraid of him slipping. His chest rocks as he fights for another breath, chained-back coughs trying to get out of his convulsing throat._

_Finally he hisses, "H...Haku, we have to get those motherfuckers."_

"_They left wh-when I called the police..."_

_Dell laughs slowly, but it is cut off by a fit of gasping again. Haku watches painfully, knowing there is nothing a hummingbird girl can do for him now._

"_Pussies...ya tell them that th-the near...nearest police station is...five minutes away, and they're hell outta there."_

_Haku swallows dryly. Nothing but dust and sand and sour bullets run down her throat. "And, we can't get them anyway. You're too hurt..."_

_He ignores her. His crimson eyes are closed. "Where are you takin...me?"_

"_To the hospital."_

"_I don...'t want to."_

_He is not seeing her small tears collect in her eyes. Would he be proud to know she isn't letting any run loose? "You'll die...I think an artery was...damaged, Dell."_

"_Fuck...that. Fuck all that." He pauses, gains a breath, squints through the pain, "You...'re okay, right, H-Haku?"_

"_...Yes."_

_Baby sobs while Daddy fights a locked door to get to her, to get to his child, his daughter doll hummingbird._

**X**

"H-h-he...in the...ambulance...got his second w-wind, I suppose...," Haku hiccups, and has to pause to stop her tears from bursting. She's done well so far. When they let her see Dell she doesn't want to have telltale tearstains down her cheeks. "I d-don't know why...or how, but he...started yelling, and fighting...even with all th-the blood he's lost..."

Luka nods. She is at a table with Haku now. Her notepad has long been discarded, Haku already has given the culprits' descriptions. Now she just listens to Haku out of curiosity.

She is kind.

She isn't forceful.

The little blonde is still crying in the lobby. Her sobs are painful, loud. Cry—that is what Haku wants to do. But she can't—for Dell.

"He...was yelling f-for Leon and G-Gakupo...and telling me stuff...telling me I was an idiot...I really shouldn't have k-kept quiet...and he said that—that he loved me, but that was after, when th-they'd told him to calm down, and they were working on his wounds," Haku reveals, her face turned down to the table. She once again tried to match the strands of her silver hair to the grooves in the fancy wood table.

"I understand, Haku." Luka smiles kindly, her expression unforced, and how in the world did Haku accuse her of being fake before..? "He sounds like he's a very caring brother."

"H...he doesn't show i-it much...but yes..."

Suddenly, Kiyoteru appears. His eyes are blocked again by the light.

Haku remembers seeing him last. She had just finished with the criminal descriptions for Luka, and Kiyoteru had stepped in to tell her of Dell's condition.

She'd barely listened, the words were mere fluttering butterflies of all shades of dark around her head, until a bright blue butterfly appeared in the monotone of long words and medical terms. The butterfly told her, "He will live. He will have some trouble walking for a couple months or more, but Dell will be fine once he gets out of Intensive Care ward."

It had been an hour since then.

Still, the recall of the trauma that evening had Haku near tears, although her hope remained.

The butterfly had rested on her shoulder for all sixty minutes, fluttering at her ears whenever she got too sad, whispering its good news when she wanted to sob so hard that she'd die.

That butterfly hadn't greeted the blonde girl, and Haku deeply doubted it ever will.

Maybe the tears that still arrived in Haku, even when the blue butterfly spoke, belonged to the little girl; she just had so many tears she needed to share.

Or maybe they were tears of happiness.

Haku found this a strange concept—she'd never felt so happy that she would cry before.

Wasn't it an oxymoron?

"Haku, you can visit your brother now, if you'd like."

'_If you'd like?'_

Why_ ask_ her that?

Of course she'd _like_ to.

Haku stands, and bade Ms Megurine a soft goodbye. She still stutters even on that _one _word.

Kiyoteru leads her through the waiting room, and as she passes, Haku wishes to take the blonde girl with the white bow by the hand and show her hope in the form of a surviving Dell.

But...it was much too late for that girl's brother.

Children can't live against trains.

Although, apparently, adults can live against three gunshots.

Or maybe Dell is just a special exception.

After all, he not only does that, but he chain-smokes religiously, operates on two hours of sleep a night, and protects hummingbird, rabbit Haku...

What normal person would ever do that?

Kiyoteru opens the door, and leaves Haku to her brother. He says to call if she wants to speak to him, but Haku knows she won't ever need Kiyoteru, because she will never take her gaze off her brother's eyes again.

They are half-lidded, dark as the blood that had painted him earlier. He is not wearing a shirt, and a gauze bandage is pressed over the stitches in his shoulder. His destroyed hand is over the covers, on his stomach, tied tightly in bandages.

He watches Haku walk in with a pleased expression, happy to see her in fine condition. His silver hair has no sparkle—so it is now grey in the yellow hospital lights. The rings under his eyes seem to have darkened double-time in shade.

"Hello, Dell," Haku greets him quietly, and lowers herself slow and careful onto a chair. It is a soft chair, bright white. She feels like she can sink into it and be lost forever in this room. "H...how are you?"

Dell swallows heavily, as if trying to push down a barbed brick in his throat. The voice that emerges is hoarse. It's one of insomnia. "How are _you?"_

"I'm well," The shake in her voice has lessened, so she does not stutter very much around her brother. "And you?" she prompts in her usual timid rabbit voice.

Her heart now, though, is not one of a rushing terrified rabbit. It is calm, it is knowledgeable.

She hopes his heart is the same.

"Great...ish, but I want a smoke." He weakly levitates his broken hand off the covers, just by a bare inch to show her his dilemma. He drops it a little too fast and winces.

"You can't in here."

"What a shocker." He softly closes his eyes for a moment, as if remembering, a memory roll playing out behind his eyelids. The crimson meets hers again, and he gives a little gasp. Haku assumes it's from what he's seeing in her mind—

Happiness?—

But Dell says nothing of it. He instead smirks at her. "I didn't properly thank you for saving me."

Haku felt a small blush crawling to her cheeks and her ears. "D-don't, anyone would have done it."

"Yeah, the purple douchebag _so_ looked ready to knock his friend out."

"Dell..."

He clears his throat, shifts a tiny bit under the blankets, and cringes. "Hey, come here," he mutters to her, struggling to sit up a bit more. He doesn't succeed. The pain in his leg seems too strong. He stays lying down.

The soft chair had been too soft and she felt like she's sinking. Haku gratefully stands over him, her brother smiling against the white backdrop. He is as pale as the pillows from lack of blood. He looks so tired. He needs sleep; she should leave.

Dell stares right up into her eyes. Haku doesn't relinquish the gaze, her breathing deep. His is shallow, but they fall to the same pattern, the same heartbeats.

She feels calmness, she feels happiness, a will to look past the pain and see the beauty of what is right around. She feels exhaustion. She feels pride.

And for the first time she feels like she's looking into _his _head.

"Haku, you wanna sing something for me?"

This surprises her. "Hm?"

"Sing something. I'm exhausted. It's not very relaxing to hear that girl shrieking her lungs out in the lobby." Dell's smirk turns to an honest smile. "Sing me something?"

Haku smiles too. She entwines her fingers through his good hand, closes her eyes, and breathes.

'_Can I be my own ally?_

_Haku is not my only..._

_Dell is my ally, he is the strength, I am the weak ally, the quiet and the thoughtful.'_

It is in her _own _head that she feels pride.

"Yes, I'll sing for you."

**XxXxXxXxXxX**

Haku steps carefully, not wanting to tread on the cat's flippant tail or airy feet. Her schoolbag is over a shoulder, making her walk slightly crooked. It is heavy with the completed homework that teachers sent to her house. After all, she hasn't been in her school for a month; she's been taking care of her brother.

He is now with her, on crutches. They are metal and make loud noises when he hits the floor. One leg is bandaged and sewn up like a mummy, but it cannot be seen under his black jeans.

Haku has one hand on the small of his back, in case he tips. He still has not gotten the hang of the tilting support of the crutches.

She is taller than him so she smiles down at him, honestly, her face never having been punctuated by so many smiles as she's had this month.

He is grouchy, though. He only has one crutch because of his hand, and he refused to accept a wheelchair. He has been learning to smoke with his left hand, but it proves that Dell is not ambidextrous. At _all._

They enter the schoolyard, and the cat swerves away from Haku as it hear the terrors of teenagers driving cars, yelling, running. Haku whispers it a goodbye. She wonders if it can hear her, understand her...

A hush falls on the crowd.

Eyes are grating words into Haku's skin; slut, bitch, ho, trash, nothing—she is used to it. It still bleeds. It will probably never, ever stop. But the scars aren't so apparent now.

Dell stops at the foot of the stairs leading to the school. He is lucky their Doll House is only one floor, or else he would have much more to complain about.

"See ya, Haku," he says in a long drawl. His lips are bitten and bloody from him chewing them so much—he cannot smoke, so he will rip up his own mouth. "Don't let any whore give you any shit."

Just then, three girls step up from the top of the stairs. They are a clique, they are identical. They are rich and they are the ones who burned Haku's hair ribbon and her gym clothes because they thought it was funny.

"Speak of the devil," Dell scowls, "and the devil shall appear."

The leader girl sniffs arrogantly at Dell. Her hair is long and fire-red, an ahoge on top and she wear a white, pink, and blue dress. She turns back to Haku. "Wow, look who finally dragged herself from the psych ward. How'd it go, bitch? Are you finally done—"

Something stops her short.

Dell is glaring at her, perhaps the effect intensified by how he looks. Like he has been in a huge fight recently. Perhaps the effect is lessoned. Because he looks like that he lost that fight.

"You say a fucking word to her in the rest of your life," Dell says, never tearing his crimson eyes from hers of blue, "and you and your whorehouse won't have enough of yourselves left to even cake up with makeup."

She looks shocked for a second, and her clique looks ready to fire a remark about his own appearance when he interrupts, "Deal?"

She frowns. "You've got a lot of talk for someone who's on crutches."

Haku-hummingbird buzzes, "If you knew how he got them, you wouldn't be saying that."

Dell smirks.

The girl flips her hair and laughs. The others echo her. "Oh yeah?"

"Yes." Haku nods, making the gesture more emphasized than her usual tiny scared twitch. "...Jerk." Haku herself stomps up the stairs, past the group of girls, so fast so they won't spot the blush of regret blooming on her face.

Dell laughs loudly, louder than she's heard him laugh in a long while. "Yeah, that's a fucking start, Haku!" he yells at her, grinning.

She turns, swivelling on one heel, and looks far past the group of girls. Into his beaming face, into his eyes, reading everything behind the crimson and the grin. Amusement, challenge, happiness. Pride shows up again.

She waves to him once before he turns to leave, limping, struggling, but he is fine, he will be perfectly fine.

The baby has grown.

She's learning to speak up like her faithful guard, she's learning to walk fast and run like a cat; she's learning that keeping the nursery door wide open and inviting to Dell is sometimes is a perfect way to have it.

**xXxXxXxXx**


End file.
